


not even the rain

by scatteredpeas



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Hugs, Is this a drabble?, Just a brief moment in time, asami has a lot of feelings, no real plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24714439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scatteredpeas/pseuds/scatteredpeas
Summary: Asami finds herself staring at Korra's hands in the pre-dawn light.(aka Asami has a lot of feelings in the morning)
Relationships: Korra & Asami Sato, Korra/Asami Sato
Comments: 7
Kudos: 118





	not even the rain

Asami finds herself staring at Korra's hands in the pre-dawn light.

It’s early in the morning and she wakes almost like surfacing from a swim, breathing in the new air of the day. For a moment it’s just silent and peace and warmth; in this moment before her brain finds its place in the world, her heart beats simply, _thump, thump, thump_ , beats because it’s alive.

She stretches and the quiet stillness is broken. Her thoughts come back to her, like a tired exhale, and she remembers who she is, where she is, what she is. She pulls a hand up from under the covers and rubs her eyes. A yawn. Then, as her vision blurs, she hears soft breathing beside her.

Korra is next to her, she discovers, just like she discovers every morning. Korra lies on her side, her face just inches from Asami's own; Korra's eyes are closed, her brows relaxed, her expression a curiously slack blankness. Asami watches, her eyes flickering to Korra's shoulder, watches the way it rises and falls and rises and falls. She smiles. She inches forward lazily and kisses Korra on the nose, lazily. 

Korra sniffs briefly and Asami waits for her eyes to open, but this sleep is deep and Korra does not stir. Asami moves back. Her hand slips under the covers, burrowing into the warmth, searching. When she finds Korra's hand — a cool kind of softness, despite being under the blanket the whole night - she takes it gently and pulls it up. She does this carefully, her eyes never leaving Korra's sleeping face, pulls Korra's hand from under the blanket until it’s out, in the morning air. Asami kisses the knuckles gently. Gently.

It starts off gently, just a press of her lips against Korra’s skin. But then: out of nowhere comes a sudden fierceness. The weight of Korra's hand doesn’t change, but suddenly Asami is swept up in a sudden fierceness that wants to kiss that hand hard, to make sure it’s real – to make sure it’s here. 

She kisses it again, her lips lingering for a second longer to appease the fierceness. Korra sleeps on through this, and Asami thinks it’s fitting, maybe, that in this early dawn light, Korra sleeps on not knowing the kind of overwhelming, red-hot emotion that Asami feels, right now, a kind of burning need to protect, to love; nothing carnal, but everything primal. 

Asami lets out a single breath. It seems small, compared to the feeling inside.

Asami holds Korra's hand inside her own, and she brings her other hand up and uses that, too, to hold Korra's. The light is dim, almost not there, almost there, just right — enough to see in, not enough to signal that the day is really, truly here. In this light, Asami plays with Korra's hand, feels each finger, each knuckle, each callus. She looks at the hand, at Korra's hand, and she realizes — 

It is a very small hand. It’s a hand that holds so much strength, capable of so much control; it’s a hand with more power in it than any in the entire world — and yet, it is so, so human. So small. So fragile. 

Asami's own hands curl over it. She frowns as the fierceness returns, this time tinged with an uncomfortable feeling, a need to run away, an urge to pick this small human up and run and run and run. A kind of prickling at the back of her mind. Fear? Is this fear? Asami stares at Korra's hand and feels fear. 

In the safety of their warm bed, under the covers, with Korra sleeping peacefully, Asami feels a terrible, inexplicable terror. An emptiness that yawns across the horizon of her mind, like the dawn that threatens to rise; all of a sudden, all Asami could see and think and feel is, Korra's hands are so small. 

A painful swallow. Asami wants to reach out and feel Korra, but at the same time she does not want to let go of her hand. She compromises; she kisses the hand, again, and at the same time moves out of her own warmth and into Korra's. She holds Korra's hand, her arm, tightly, and presses herself against the rest of Korra. She breathes in Korra's scent and feels the borderline uncomfortable heat from Korra's body — and still, still the terror does not recede. 

Asami tightens her grip on Korra’s hand because she doesn’t know what to do or why she’s feeling this way and—

Around her, Korra shifts, slowly waking. Her hand wakes, too, moving out of Asami's grasp, and for a moment Asami feels so unanchored that her breath catches in her throat. But then the hand goes up her shoulder, behind her shoulder, down to her waist and suddenly Korra is awake and Korra is holding her.

“What’s wrong?” Korra's voice is scratchy, a low rumble in her chest, a tickling breath from her mouth that moves the hair behind Asami's ear. It’s thick with sleep, soft with love, and Asami curls deeper into Korra. She feels Korra take her first real breath of the day, feels the way Korra's chest rises, the way Korra's arms tighten around her. 

She feels the reality of Korra, now, she feels Korra is real, is tangible. Gently, she kisses Korra's shoulder.

“Asami?”

The hand on her waist pulls her closer, and Asami lets herself take in Korra’s presence, lets it surround her completely. “We're here,” she says to Korra, softly. There’s a quiet sound of agreement, and the faintest touch of lips against her hair. She smiles, and knows that Korra is smiling, too.

In the pre-dawn light, Asami breathes with Korra, the slow, steady breathing of the newly awakened. 

\--

"nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands” - e.e.cummings

**Author's Note:**

> idk what the conventions of reposting stuff is, but i wrote this with random characters before but felt it worked well w/ korrasami so i edited and fleshed it out for them -- hopefully thats...ok? 
> 
> been slowly trying to get back into writing after a long ass time whew


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